Demi-Gods and Would-be Gods
by MegaBadBunny
Summary: Rose, Tentoo, and religion. Hurt/comfort, angst, romance. An extension of themes presented in Impossible Planet/Satan Pit. Written after going to church for the first time in years and hearing a horrible sermon. Based on the prompt "You lied to me." Quite possibly sacrilegious. (Teen for language & adult themes; Adult/Mature version can be found on AO3, Tumblr, and Teaspoon.)
1. Part 1

You wouldn't think it, but they encounter a lot of churches in their line of work. Churches, temples, synagogues, mosques, cathedrals, perched on mountaintops, nestled in forests, tucked away in bustling cities or sleepy little hamlets. For whatever reason, the extraterrestrial nasties in this universe seem drawn to these structures, these holy places.

The Doctor has theories about the sort of psychic energy that worship produces, the hormones excreted by various beings when they experience things like awe, wonder, love, hate and fear; oh yes, he has his theories, about those experiences and the sorts of creatures drawn to them. But before he bores Rose to tears with said theories, he has a question.

"What do you believe in?" he asks, and she shrugs. "Lots of things," she replies, and leaves it at that.

It's a rather a broad question, he realizes. Lots of answers could get swept up in that net. He leaves it alone, for now. He can always fish again later.

* * *

He tries again a few weeks afterward, when a mission leads them on a chase to Thailand. With the help of several monks, they rid a local Buddhist temple of its nasty Carelian arachnid infestation—promising, of course, to transfer the arachnids to a safe habitat afterward.

The Doctor thinks they should probably stomp the spiders and be done with it. See how they like it, being terrified before they go _splat_ under someone's shoe. The arachnids hurt quite a few people, terrorizing monks halfway across the world before Torchwood finally tracked them down, and they made a lot of folks sick in the process. The Doctor has little patience for things that hurt people, anymore. (Probably this is the whole "blood and anger and revenge" bit that the other one was blathering on about.) But the monks were the ones affected, and the monks asked that their lives be spared.

Because of their convictions. Because of their beliefs.

So he asks Rose again. What does she believe in?

"You mean like a religion?" she asks.

He does, sort of.

"Haven't got one."

He frowns. No, that isn't quite what he's looking for either. But she doesn't volunteer anything more, and he doesn't push.

(It's an experiment, he thinks. He's asked the question and done his background research. Now he just needs to modify his methods. Tweak words and nudge factors until he gets his answer, until he can draw a reasonable conclusion, until she tells him what he wants to know.)

* * *

"Most humans believe in something," he tells her one day, when they float past a mosque in downtown London. He looks out the zeppelin window and swirls his champagne in its glass, a hundred-pounds' worth of Pete's best about to disappear down his gullet without so much as a blink. "Doesn't have to be a religion," he continues. "Tricky things, those. Easily stagnated."

"Also occasionally full of stuffy old geezers in funny old clothes," Rose adds.  
"Also, that," the Doctor agrees. "What about you, though?"

Rose sidles up next to him, looping her arm through his. "Don't worry. You're the only stuffy old geezer for me," she teases.

He frowns. She grins and kisses him on the cheek, soft lips leaving a vague heart-shape behind. A signature in lipstick. A declaration in red. She saunters away, throwing a coy look over a shoulder partially exposed by a backless gown and that, that's an expression he's gotten to know very well over these last few months. A familiar request in this strange new universe. Rose leads him to an empty loo at the back of the aircraft and when the two of them emerge, he has lipstick smeared in all sorts of other places, as well.

It's a diversion. (Though a welcome one.) He knows this.

(Well, he figures it out later. His brain has been around for a good long while, but his body hasn't, and it's easily distracted by tempting smells and pillowy curves and teeth grazing the shell of his ear.)

* * *

"What about you?" she asks, at the steps of a small church near Pete and Jackie's manor. Tony is singing in the children's choir this morning, got a solo and everything. That is the only reason either of them are setting foot in this building, and the Doctor's having trouble even with that— _carpets_ and _drapes_ and _mortgages_ are all very good and well, but that's about the extent of his domestic capabilities, and this is just a bridge too far. Rose has to tug on his hand and remind him that this is for Tony, no one and nothing else, and they can go out for chips and ice cream after.

The Doctor doesn't have a chance to answer her question before they're ushered to a pew, and then people are standing and singing and sitting and listening and some old fellow is drawling on endlessly and he's fidgeting and constantly eying the clock even though he knows exactly what time it is, down to the second, because try as you may, some things never leave you. His right knee bounces madly, impatience buzzing through his skeleton. It's a little bit better when Tony shyly performs his piece in front of the congregation, but then it's right back to the jump-jump-jumping. The Doctor knows he's making the whole pew vibrate and Rose puts her hand on his knee but she doesn't stop him, just scratches at his leg through his trousers in an absent gesture of reassurance. That's enough for now, the weight of her pressing into him, reminding him that this will be over soon and it'll be worth it to see the happiness shining on Tony's face afterward.

But then the sermon, which started out as a harmless, if a bit dull and historically inaccurate, retelling of Joseph and his technicolor dreamcoat, suddenly veers into something else. A story about family and pride, love and betrayal, hardship and faith somehow transmutes into a lecture, and suddenly hate-filled words are dripping from the pastor's mouth. Words like "sin" and "the Devil," "sexual perversions" and "moral degradations", "anti-life" and "feminist propaganda," "entitled youths" and "beware the temptations of the world". Each passing word makes the Doctor's blood boil more and more for reasons he can't quite describe.

Now Rose's hand on his leg is digging fingernails into his flesh. He can tell by the tension of her arm and the muscle grown taut in her jaw that she's just as upset by the words as he is, just as angry at these petty humans spewing their narrowminded worldviews in a stream of hurtful bile.

The Doctor wants to stand up. He wants to argue. He really wants to speechify. Wants to put that horrid red-faced little man in his place, tell him what a showdown with the Devil is really like. Show the attendees of this church what a real sinner is truly capable of.

Instead, he laces his fingers with Rose's and he pushes up off the pew and pulls Rose along with him. Jackie faintly protests; both of them ignore her. The Doctor can feel Rose's pulse hammering in her fingers as he drags her out of the building. A thrill runs up his spine and he wonders if she feels the same way.

A few moments later, bodies and mouths colliding as he pushes her up against the cold stone wall, he finds out.

(The answer, of course, is _Yes_.)

* * *

If that was the sort of thing that will send him to hell, the Doctor thinks afterward, then he'll go without a fuss and with a smile. Because that was so much better than any religion could ever be.

(He knows that he would make a very bad god, but Rose made a pretty decent goddess once upon a time. Perhaps he is a religious man after all, he thinks, because he would gladly worship her. Her body would be his temple, her sighs his blessings, her kisses and touch, his reward; when she draws him in for a kiss, he swallows the benedictions from her lips.)

He doesn't even consider the possibility that he's looking at her through rose-colored-glasses, or lenses colored after any other flower for that matter; to him, she is the very best of humanity, and only a little of the worst, all poured into a magnificent form that laughs and swears and loves and wants and does. His words are hardly songs of praise, soft and shy as they are while the two of them wait outside for the church service to end, but if she can make them out, she'll know he's saying words of gratitude. It's a lot of pressure to be someone's friend and lover and salvation and conscience all wrapped into one, and your own person besides; he plans to say thank-you in all the ways he can imagine.

Rose doesn't ask again what he believes in.

* * *

On a bitter winter day some time later, the Doctor watches a monastery burn down from a fire of his making.

He didn't have any other choice. A Glebring was hiding in the walls, slowly excreting a poison mist that would have killed everyone in the town. (Terrible timing, that; if could have only waited a few months, the translation circuits in the TARDIS would have been ready, and perhaps the Doctor could have negotiated with it a little better.) Fortunately, the Doctor knows that the efficacy of such a mist is greatly diminished when exposed to temperatures above 600 Celsius; unfortunately, such temperatures will also kill the Glebring.

The human inhabitants all survive. The creature in the walls does not, and it, along with several hundred years' worth of history, dies in a fiery blaze in front of him. Yet another thing he couldn't save. Another creature he couldn't reason with. One more failure to call his own.

"I don't think I believe in any gods," Rose says, interlocking her fingers with his, "but I can see why some people would."

He shoots her a questioning glance, and she smiles. "People believe in all sorts of different things that get them through the day, and that's okay," she explains. "Whether it's gods or science or the amazing power of the human spirit, or whatever."

"At least two of those things are a little silly," the Doctor grumps.

"I dunno. I think if it helps you, and you help other people, and no one gets hurt, or held back, then all of it's good," Rose argues softly. "It's good to have something or someone to believe in. Something to give you hope."

"And what about you?" the Doctor asks. "What gives Rose Tyler hope?"

"Oh, all the usual stuff," Rose tells him. "The power of good over bad. The idea that the right side will eventually win. Knowing that you can't save everyone, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try."

The Doctor allows himself a small smile. He knows that most of this is for his benefit, to soothe the sad sap counting all the things he did wrong instead of celebrating the people who survived—the people who are, in fact, holding hands and praying, and giving thanks, of all things. Their holy place is gone, along with several of their homes and many of their possessions, but they all seem immeasurably happy to be alive. Why can't he be happy if they are? Surely their feelings on the matter are more important than his.

"It's a good list," he says. "But is that everything? Not that it isn't complete as it is."

"Well, there's also logic and reason and science, and the times that none of them mean anything," Rose tells him. "And…"

She quickly grows shy, her eyes casting down to the ground. "And that's about it," she says.

The Doctor knows she's lying.

He doesn't press it. He has his secrets. He supposes it's fair that she has hers, too.


	2. Part 2

Secrets, the Doctor thinks later, are all good and well until they're not yours. Then they should promptly be revealed, dissected, and mutated into a firmly non-secret status, before being submerged into a vat of Blorgax acid. The future should hold a decidedly anti-secret policy for everyone who is not him.

He arrives at this decision after a trip in the freshly grown TARDIS goes a bit pear-shaped. It turns out that the Indeasian raptors in this universe are not friendly toward humans, and, as ever, the Doctor seems determined to find that out the hard way.

"Move!" Rose shouts, but his stupid human body can't respond in time. He freezes in place, only able to watch as a stream of liquid fire hurtles toward him. Doesn't even have a chance to throw up his arm in front of his face.

Luckily, Rose is a little faster than he is.

Instead of blinding pain, there's just the sensation of Rose's body barreling into him, knocking him into the ground so hard that the air rips from his lungs. The liquid fire shoots out in spurts overhead and eats into the wall behind him. He smells it singe the air and Rose's jacket, oxygen molecules and cotton-poly blends burning with an acrid stench. His shoulder strikes duracrete and he'll have a nasty bruise to contend with later, but he's safe from getting his skin boiled off.

"We've gotta get out of here," Rose pants, pushing off the temple floor and yanking him up before he has a chance to say anything. "Come _on_!"

She pulls him along and the two of them are laughing as they run and it isn't until they've made it back down the mountain, safely back in the TARDIS, that the Doctor notices something is wrong.

The TARDIS doors slam behind them and both Rose and the Doctor slump back, breathless and exhilarated, laughing even harder now at the sounds of their pursuers scrabbling to get in. Indeasian raptor-claws may be made of some of the toughest stuff in the universe, but when it comes to the TARDIS, they can't so much as a scratch the paint. Rose and the Doctor can hear the raptors calling for reinforcements and that just doubles their mirth, the silliness of it all, the triumph of a mission gone right and the adrenaline of such a close call.

But when the Doctor wraps his arms around Rose to bring her in for a hug (and maybe a little snog too), she stiffens in his arms, a pained whimper dying in her throat.

"It's nothing," she grunts. She doesn't look at him when she says it. "Just a little banged-up from back at the temple."

"You all right?"

"I'll be fine, just a bit sore."

"You wouldn't happen to need any clever fingers to take care of that for you?" the Doctor asks with a grin.

Rose smiles back at him, and later, he'll curse himself for not thinking anything of it, the fact that the smile is just a little thinner than usual. "Raincheck on that, but—tea in a few minutes, maybe?" Rose asks. "I'm just going to run down to the medbay first, see what I can do to take care of this."

"Certainly," the Doctor nods, and he can't help it; he presses a kiss to her forehead. It's easily one of his more human habits and judging by how Rose's face brightens—well, she's noticed.

"What was that for?" she asks.

"For saving me, back at the temple. Now go," he says, swatting her behind for emphasis. (He almost doesn't notice the wince that crosses her face after.) "Medbay now, tea later!"

"Yes, sir," Rose answers with a faux salute before she turns and leaves. The Doctor bounds off to the galley with a grin on his lips and a song in his head and he whistles to himself, both while he makes tea and after, and he waits.

And waits. And waits. And waits a little bit more.

He sits for about twenty-six minutes (twenty-five minutes and thirty-seven seconds, to be precise) before he starts to think maybe something's up.

(Probably she's just fallen asleep in the medbay, he thinks. Rose has a remarkable ability to fall asleep anywhere, anywhen. It's like a superpower. She sits down, and poof! Instant deep sleep. The Doctor is half-tempted to diagnose her with selective narcolepsy.)

"Rose?" he calls before he sets foot in the medbay, but she doesn't respond. He grins to himself. Sleep, it is. Maybe they should start keeping pillows in all of the rooms.

The Doctor pushes the bay door open. "Rose, the tea's—"

Rose looks up at him and freezes. She is not asleep. She is sitting on the counter, half-naked, an eighty-seventh century dermal reconstructor clutched in one hand. A trail of mismatched items stretches from him to her—the rubbish of empty medical packs, a pile of dirty flannels, a jacket and two shirts shed on the floor where she dropped them.

He doesn't know how he missed it before, but while her jacket is merely singed, her shirts are completely scorched on one side. The shirts are almost more hole than shirt.

"—gone cold," the Doctor finishes, more for completion's sake than anything else.

His eyes travel from the mess on the floor, up to Rose's body, and his feet follow. He looks her over. The wound is mostly gone—good stuff, eighty-seventh century medicine—but if the rubbish on the floor is anything to go by, she's ripped through at least four packs of genetic repair material, yet her skin is _still_ raw and red, even blistered in some places.

If that's what the wound looks like now…he doesn't want to know how it looked before.

"I'm fine," Rose blurts out.

An odd feeling suffuses the Doctor's being, then. Sort of like all the blood rushing from the top of his head to pump in his ears. Strangely, the sound of his thundering pulse is all he can hear.

The Doctor doesn't say anything. Slipping his specs on, he rifles through a cabinet until he finds a clean flannel, uses it to wipe some of the excess repair material from Rose's ribs. His motions are brisk, efficient; he overlooks how Rose cringes with every stroke. Once she's cleaned off, the Doctor pulls a drawer open and extricates a small silver vial. Rose was on the right track when she used the reconstructor, and distantly, he's proud of her for remembering that, for squirreling away the offhand detail he dropped however many weeks ago when they first stocked up on medical supplies. But she couldn't have known that the reconstructor works best when paired with a tincture from Vorgor, because he never told her, because he never thought she'd try to use it on her own, because he never thought she'd be reckless enough to let herself get hurt for him.

He doesn't want to think about _why_ she'd be reckless enough to get hurt for him.

The Doctor feels incalculably stupid that he didn't figure all this out sooner.

"You lied to me," he says quietly.

Rose arches an eyebrow at him. "What? When?"

Shaking his head, the Doctor ignores her questions. "If I'm too thick to get out of the way next time, you should just let me get hit. There's no point in you getting hurt."

Rose laughs uncertainly. "Okay, erm, don't take this the wrong way—I love you and all, but that, back there? It wasn't anything special. That was just Torchwood training taking over. I would have done it for anyone."

"Would you?" the Doctor asks, his voice pulled tight like a rubber band.

Rose lets out an audible sigh when he dabs tincture on her wound. It will still take a few minutes to fully heal, but the pain relief is instant. "Yes," Rose replies after a moment, and he can hear her trying to regulate her breathing, urging her body to ditch the last of its flight-or-flight response and return to normal. "Besides," she continues, "Not like I could let you get hurt, right? The universe needs you more than it needs me."

"Nonsense," the Doctor mutters. He rubs at his eyes under his specs. Gods, he's tired all of a sudden. "I am utterly taken aback at the amount of complete, unmitigated nonsense streaming from your mouth right now."

"Well, that's too bad, cos it's true."

"Don't be stupid."

"You're the one who's being stupid. Can't you have even a little sympathy for the hurt girl?"

The rubber band stretches further and the Doctor can feel his patience straining along with it. "No," he breathes, dabbing on the last of the ointment, "I will not have sympathy, nor will I have patience, for someone who cannot respect my wishes regarding my own person. I did not want you to get hurt on my behalf. I did not ask for it. I never will ask for it. And I do not appreciate your cavalier attitude on the matter."

"Considering how you usually respond to things, that's sort of the pot calling the kettle black," Rose sighs. She runs a hand through her hair. "God, this is why I didn't say anything," she mutters, rolling her eyes.

Rubber pulls and snaps and the Doctor snaps too, hurling the vial to the ground so hard that it shatters with a _crash_.

"Oi—!" Rose starts to say, but her words are cut off when the Doctor grabs her by the chin.

"You won't do it again. Do you understand?" he demands, loudly, far more loudly than he needs to at this proximity, and fuck, but he hates how out-of-control this horrible human body is, how the rise of testosterone and depletion of monoamine can just send him careening off the rails. Hates the way Rose's eyes widen and she almost looks scared of him.

"Never again," he hisses. "I've had a millennia of experience taking care of myself. I don't need you to do it for me. I especially don't need anyone else to sacrifice themselves for me. It was a stupid thing to do. Astonishingly stupid, Rose. Do you hear me?"

"Jesus," Rose snaps. She jerks her head back and smacks his hand away. "Does everything have to be about your ridiculous fucking guilt?"

Anger boils his insides. "It isn't—"

"I'm not gonna act like you've never done anything wrong," Rose interrupts him. "Believe me, I know you're not perfect. _Lord_ , do I know it. But it's just so unbe _liev_ ably selfish and self-centered to act like you're the sole cause of everything that goes bad in the universe. It's not noble. It's certainly not healthy. It's this stupid self-martyrdom that doesn't help anybody."

"I'm not—"

"I mean, just for once, can we acknowledge that your feelings aren't the only ones that matter?" Rose chokes out. "Can you please just respect that I'm an adult, fully capable of making my own decisions, even if you don't like them?"

"It's nothing to do with that—" he tries to rush out, but she's already talking over him, and wow, does it fester under his skin to be on this side of things. He really does not take his own medicine very well, he realizes, and that just makes him even angrier.

"...and you're part of my team now. You _are_ my team. That means I can't let anything happen to you!"

"And what about you, what about if something happens to you?" the Doctor half-shouts. "What am I supposed to do, then? You, you've got a family here, a mother and a brother and friends and a job and people who will miss you when you're gone. I've got _nothing_ here, nothing and no one but you. You're going to take that away from me, too?" he finishes, and now he really is shouting.

And that's when Rose's lower lip trembles and her eyes are suddenly very shiny and oh god, she's about to cry, isn't she?

She is. She does.

Fat tears well up at the corners of her eyes and she pushes them away angrily and more take their place.

And that's when the panic sets in.

"Don't..." the Doctor starts. Starts and stops. Swallows the feeling of his stomach in his throat. Waits for the pounding in his ears to subside. Slipping his glasses off, he deposits them in his pocket with a heavy sigh, glances about the medbay uneasily.

He really did not need this reminder of just how different things are in this new world. All this talking and fighting and _feeling_ and he's certain he wouldn't have to put up with any of it if he still had a fully-grown TARDIS and the full knowledge of the universe bouncing around his skull, because why would you fight about things when there are so many better things to do, planets to discover, people to save, new galaxies to name?

(A small voice in the back of his head also points out that none of those things are fun to do alone, that for everything he's lost, he's gained quite a lot too; he kindly tells that small voice exactly what it can do with itself, in language that would make his Time Lord counterpart blush.)

The Doctor wants to sound sympathetic, wishes he could comfort her the way she needs, but his voice just comes out sort of flat. "Don't do that," he mutters. "Please."

"Look," Rose mumbles, her voice thick and unsteady, "can we stop acting like you wouldn't do the exact same thing for me? And can we just pretend, just for a second, that I got hurt really badly today, and I could really use your support right now, and maybe, just maybe, my very real, _very physical_ _pain_ is just a tad more important than your self-imposed guilt?"

The Doctor considers it. He worries his tongue inside his mouth. He bites back a bitter laugh.

He turns and leaves the room.

* * *

The Doctor half-expects to find their bedroom empty when he retires later that night (after several hours of angry tinkering in which absolutely nothing productive happened, unless one lives in a world where four burned fingers are considered "productive"), but he pushes the door open to find that he's not alone. He can't see Rose, the room being as pitch-dark as it is (not everyone is lucky enough to sleep anywhere at will; he can't even doze off if there's so much as a shred of light in the room), but the soft sounds of her breathing give her away.

He can tell by the spaces between her breaths that she is not asleep. She is awake, and she is ignoring him. But she doesn't tell him to go away. That at least seems like something.

Shucking his plimsolls and nothing else, the Doctor quietly slides under the duvet, careful to disturb Rose as little as possible. She's lying with her back to him, so he can't see the look on her face to gauge how she feels right now, whether she wants a hug or not. But probably he should stay on his side of the bed tonight. Give her some space, let her come to him on her own terms.

Minutes tick by. He fidgets under the blanket. Toes curl in his socks and fingers clench at his sides. He's an island in his own bed and he doesn't like it. But he can be a responsible adult, can't he?

...no, apparently he can't.

Swallowing loudly, he rolls over, sidles closer to Rose until he can feel the heat of her body, even without touching her. He leaves that last inch and a half of space just in case.

Damn. All of this was so much easier when he could just refuse to talk about anything and simply bluster away.

"You think too highly of me," he tells her.

Rose laughs, a harsh sound. "Not right now, I don't."

"You do, though. Have for a long time."

"Yeah, and you've always loved it in the past, haven't you. You and your ridiculous ego."

"You love my ego."

"I hate you."

He chuckles. "That's very sweet. I hate you too."

Silence. The Doctor starts to wonder if she's drifted off to sleep after all. But then Rose reaches back for his hand and tugs his arm snugly around her. Holding back a relieved exhale, he allows himself to press closer until his body pillows hers and his face is buried in her hair. His hand splays over her stomach; fingers edge under her shirt like they've a mind of their own, but he isn't teasing her, isn't trying to start anything. He explores the expanse of her fresh new skin. It's hot to the touch and just a little too soft, a smidge too smooth, and even though she's healing quite nicely, he can still make out where new flesh meets old.

Anger still burns deep in his gut, an ember that smolders at the floor of his stomach. It's the urge to do something dramatic, the drive to hurt the people who hurt her. He should be better than that, but he's not. Not anymore.

"I'm not worth it, Rose," the Doctor says quietly. "You need something better to believe in."

A moment passes.

"You're an idiot," Rose says.

* * *

The Doctor doesn't care much for churches, he thinks. Oh, there are exceptions—he enjoys good architecture wherever he sees it, whether it's the high arches and dark interiors of Gothic cathedrals or the stunning crystal structures of New Earth's neo-neo-Pagan temples, and he'll never fail to appreciate the cultural significance of the Ice Warrior Monastery or the Harmandir Sahib. But no god is flawless, no religion infallible, and if none of it can be truly perfect, he'd much rather turn his attentions elsewhere. The TARDIS is as good a church as any, after all—can't beat those coral columns or that gentle meditative hum—and he's hard-pressed to find any religion that inspires the same kind of awe that he feels when he steps out onto a new world for the first time, when he looks up and sees a sky full of unfamiliar stars.

Certainly no religion can inspire what he feels when Rose curls her fingers around his, or takes charge of a Torchwood mission, or runs alongside him in fourteenth-century Japan, or presses a kiss to his lips, or rattles off a list of oddly specific technical jargon related to Dimension Cannons and very little else. It's a weird sort of affection. Omnipresent, distracting, and honestly, if he thinks about it too much, probably a little unhealthy. But humans are just so much more fascinating than lofty gods, real or fake or demi- or would-be or anything in-between.

"Give a girl a big head, talking about her like that," Rose teases when he mentions all of this to her one day. "You know that's an impossible standard to live up to, right?"

He doesn't.


End file.
